Leaf-wrapped Turkish dish / 7-30-23 / Bit of Old Norse / Publicly makes fun of, slangily, with "on" / Social movement that Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed "the most American thing in America" / Sliced into thin strips as carrots / Verb for a biblical cup / Leaf-wrapped Mexican dish / Choctaw word for "people," as seen in a U.S. state name / Periwinkle by another name

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Doing Front Flips" — spoonerisms of a sort, where the "fronts" of two words in a familiar phrase are "flipped," creating wackiness:

Theme answers:

• MISTER BUNNY MAGS (23A: "Hugh Hefner was quite the media mogul. They called him ...")
• WEARABLE THING TO TASTE (38A: "I know they've had them on all day, but let the kids eat their candy. After all, a Ring Pop is a ...")
• GEEKS BEARING GRIFTS (56A: "Do you really trust these Bitcoiners? Beware ...")
• WHEN IT PAINS IT ROARS (78A: "That poor lion has a mighty toothache. Boy, ...")
• THREE MARE SQUEALS A DAY (94A: "Enjoy your stay on our horse farm. Hope it's not too noisy. You can expect ...")
• THRONE'S STOWAWAY (114A: "Can you believe I sneaked into Buckingham Palace in a trunk and saw the king? I was a ...")

Word of the Day: CHAUTAUQUA (19A: Social movement that Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed "the most American thing in America") —

Chautauqua (/ʃəˈtɔːkwə/ shə-TAW-kwə) is an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt said that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America". [...] Lectures were the mainstay of the Chautauqua. Until 1917, they dominated the circuit Chautauqua programs. The reform speech and the inspirational talk were the two main types of lecture until 1913. Later topics included current events, travel, and stories, often with a comedic twist. [...]

The most prolific speaker (often booked in the same venues with three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) was Russell Conwell, who delivered his famous "Acres of Diamonds" speech 5,000 times to audiences on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits, which had this theme:

Get rich, young man, for money is power and power ought to be in the hands of good people. I say you have no right to be poor.  

***

Grimaced at the first "front flip" and that was pretty much that. One of those days when the gimmick is just gonna be cornball spoonerisms and you just have to endure. Long day's journey into blight. The one upside was that despite being long (i.e despite the grid's being your typical big 21x Sunday), the journey was not, in fact, long. Ridiculously easy puzzle from start to finish. Maybe that's your reward for dealing with this conceptually flat theme. It's just spoonerisms. That's it. And to make them ... work? ... apparently full paragraph-length clues are required. Tortured premises that require pages and pages (seemingly) to set up, and all for very little payoff. Dadjoke and subdadjoke payoff. I will say that the clue on GEEKS BEARING GRIFTS almost redeemed this puzzle in my eyes. That is a zinger, an all-timer, a truth-telling theme answer if ever there was one. Bravo there. The rest, er, I'd rather not relive it. There was too much animal suffering (squealing mares? pained lions? what the hell?) and too much ... too much. Trying too hard. So very hard. For so very little. But again, love the epic dunk on Bitcoin. Here for it, for sure.

Trouble spots, there were very few. I couldn't spell CHAUTAUQUA and also I only knew CHAUTAUQUA as a place (specifically, a county, lake, and resort in western New York). The social movement ... if I knew about that, I definitely forgot. I also definitely botched TERRE Haute, despite having been to an academic conference there once. I spelled it Latinly, like the TERRA in "terra incognita" or "terra cotta" or "terra firma" wow there are a lot of Terras. I wrote in NAYAD at first at 124A: Forest nymph, which I knew was a bad spelling as I was typing it, but did it stop me, no. Anyway, naiads (the correct spelling) are water nymphs, not forest nymphs (which are DRYADs). Wrote in OKIE before OKLA (80D: Choctaw word for "people," as seen in a U.S. state name). Wanted the [Leaf-wrapped Turkish dish] to be DALMAs, which I now realize is because Raymond Chandler's pre-Marlowe detective was named John DALMAS. Incredibly bizarre, extremely unlikely conflation, but there it is. 

No idea about ANIL, which is just old-school crosswordese term for a kind of blue (source of indigo dye). I've probably seen the name many times before, just hasn't stuck. I would say the "Slumdog Millionaire" clue is fresh, but that movie is now fifteen (!) years old. Wanted JUMPS AT, not JUMPS ON, but I suppose the latter is justifiable (92D: Eagerly accepts). Always wanna spell DRIEST just like that, not like DRYEST (77D: Least sweet, maybe). I know MYRTLE as an old lady's name (as in, the name is old ... fashioned ... and most likely to belong (today) to someone old) [UPDATE: apparently MYRTLE is not a color—periwinkle is a *plant* (related to MYRTLE), and I continue to be ignorant of oh so many things…]. Had no idea it was a kind of blue. Cool thing to learn. 

Bullet points:

• 40D: Restrain, as breath (BATE) — this is not a word that anyone uses in this way. "Bated breath" is def. a thing (if a cliché thing), but BATE as a standalone verb feels bad, however dictionary-defensible it might be.
• 72D: Didn't pick up what someone was putting down (MISSED A CUE) — This week's "ATE A SANDWICH" award goes to ... this answer.
• 33D: Kind of whale with two blowholes (BALEEN) — had the B-L and how in the world was this not Baby BELUGA in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and swim so free?!?!!?

• 49D: Kind of cat with short, curly fur (REX) — sounds adorable, handsome, wise
• 69D: Big name in chicken (PERDUE) — always spell it like the university (PURDUE)
• 109A: Kvass grain (RYE) — this reminded me of this wonderful tweet I saw yesterday (yes, some things about The Company Formerly Known As Twitter are still wonderful):

saw a job posting for a bakery and I genuinely can’t tell if the typo is on purpose pic.twitter.com/CDnktaTufq

— no great matter (@BringDaNoyz) July 29, 2023

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]